


Locks and Keys

by thisbluespirit



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Sapphire and Steel
Genre: Community: intoabar, Crossover, Cursed Storybrooke (Once Upon a Time), During Evil Queen | Regina Mills's First Dark Curse, Gen, Vague references to assignment six
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:47:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24489973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/pseuds/thisbluespirit
Summary: Silver travels from one unreal diner to another.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 15
Collections: A Ficathon Goes Into A Bar, Gen Prompt Bingo Round 18





	Locks and Keys

**Author's Note:**

> My intoabar prompt was: "Silver walks into a bar and meets... Regina Mills!"
> 
> Also for genprompt_bingo square "Imprisonment."
> 
> With thanks, as ever, to Persiflage for the beta!

Silver sat down on the bar stool and glanced up at the clock on the wall. He raised his eyebrows and pulled an old-fashioned watch out of his waistcoat pocket. The clock claimed it was eight-thirty. His watch opted instead for six-fifteen. But the diner he was sitting in was arguably unreal and his pocket watch was set to the time of a very different diner that most certainly had not been real. The point was that they did not match. This town was locked in one stretched out time period of twenty-four hours, but it was not the same repeating piece of time that had trapped two Operators. 

Outside the town, matters were simpler. It was March the 16th 1984 and it was eight-thirty-four. The diner clock, real or unreal, was four minutes slow. Silver sighed, and ordered a cup of tea from the diner’s owner, presumably the eponymous Granny. 

“What big eyes you have, dear,” he murmured under his breath as she turned away to deal with his request, for reasons that were not worth pursuing. It was merely his turn to check that this particular contained problem was not showing any signs of breaking out. Technically, that wasn’t supposed to involve going inside the anomaly, but Silver couldn’t stay out of such segments of unreality lately. One had to _look_. In any case, he was always thorough in his work. Even Steel would approve of that.

(Well, no, Steel would not approve. Steel never approved.)

“What are you?” said someone suddenly from beside him. He could feel the ferocity of the speaker’s stare boring into the side of his head even before he turned to look. A female, probably human, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and bearing down on him with a dislike Silver found unaccountable. “What are you doing here?”

Silver turned and gave the woman his most charming smile. “I’m Silver.”

A line creased her forehead and she drew back, her hand going to her jacket. “Where _did_ you come from?”

“I was sent,” he said, and turned back to Granny at the bar as she pushed his cup of tea across. “Oh, thank you.” He tried his smile on her, but Granny didn’t thaw visibly either.

The dark-haired woman reached out her hand and grasped his jacket sleeve, rubbing the edge of the fabric between perfectly manicured fingers, the nails painted deep red. “You’re real.”

Well, that was always good to know. One could never be entirely sure.

“Yes,” Silver agreed. “Just keeping an eye on –” He pursed his lips and waved a hand “— this. Nothing more. Lucky for you. This toy town is your doing, isn’t it?”

Silver didn’t have Sapphire’s sensitivity, but this woman was too easy to read. He wished she was a little less so, and edged minutely along the bar stool away from her. She burned with power and emotion. It was what had torn this town out of its own place and time and brought it here. Magic, she’d call it, but humans often gave that name to things that were merely inexplicable to them as yet. Silver, who could see the very molecules that shaped the universe, didn’t need to term anything magic, but the conceit amused him. (It had amused Sapphire, too. She’d pointed out on more than one occasion that humans could easily regard _him_ as a magician, and he’d laughed. Steel, of course, had merely glared.)

That force, that magic, was no longer working in the town. Storybrooke was now abiding by the laws of Earth – another thing to be thankful he didn’t have to fix – but the echoes of it were all over the woman. Her emotions were even stronger. The war between loneliness and hatred within her radiated outwards and ate up the oxygen in the room. It had shaped the entire town and propelled it across time and space.

“Are you _threatening_ me?”

Silver stirred his tea, and cast another glance at her. She was wearing a burgundy jacket and skirt with a dove-grey silk blouse. Whatever her many other faults, he had to admire her dress sense. Other facts filtered into his mind: she was a ruler. A Queen. No, the town’s Mayor. Maybe both. Her name was apt. Regina.

“I like your outfit,” was all he said. “Charming. Unlike you, Madam Mayor. Or is that your Majesty? I really can’t tell.”

She raised her hand again, closing her fingers against her palm. Trying to do magic, he realised, but he didn’t need to worry, as that was quite impossible now that she had locked herself in this strange town. 

“I could have you arrested. I could have you killed!”

Silver laughed. He threw the teaspoon up into the air and it span around impossibly, before dissolving into sparkling atoms, a brief flurry of glitter that fell away into nothing.

Regina flinched and halted, as if he’d struck her. He could feel the fear coming off her now, feeding her anger until it became a tidal wave. In other circumstances, he might have called her a walking trigger. Badly damaged and determined to pass the favour along. Never a good combination in a human.

“What’s so funny?” she said.

Silver turned down the corners of his mouth. “Not very much, really. But you couldn’t kill me. You couldn’t even arrest me. Or, no, you could arrest me. If I let you. But it seems pointless. You couldn’t keep me in a cell.”

“Do you want to bet on that?” said Regina, turning towards the door. “The Sheriff is on his way here, and he’ll do anything I tell him to.”

Silver frowned at his tea. Yes, he could feel that as well. A connection between her and the town, its people. Her toy town, just as he’d said. He disliked that, and knew that Steel would have hated it even more. It was a shame, after all, that he wasn’t here to stop her, but his briefing had been clear on that front. This little conundrum had its own solution built in. Acting prematurely might well cause worse damage than letting it be.

“I don’t mind betting,” he said, “although a friend once told me that half the fun of that is losing sometimes, and since I would certainly win, do you think there’s much point?”

“I’m serious!”

Silver said, “I’m sure you are, but I only came in for a cup of tea. I don’t need to, of course, but I enjoy one every now and then. At least once a decade or so.”

“Oh, damn,” said Regina and rolled her eyes. “You’re some kind of immortal, aren’t you? Which realm did you drop out of? No, wait, I don’t care. I just don’t want you in my town!”

Silver thought they had already established that point. He picked up his tea cup and then decided that, no, he was not yet ready for another cup. It had not been long enough since the last one. That had also been in a diner. Overall, he had disliked that place even more than this one.

“I wouldn’t say immortal,” said Silver, considering her questions. “I came in to take a look around, that’s all. From outside. I didn’t find what I hoped for.”

Regina pressed her hand against the side of the bar. “Storybrooke isn’t entirely what I hoped for, either. How did you get in? Nobody should be able to. I made sure of that.”

“Telecommunications,” Silver said. He gestured around him at the diner. “Television aerials, telephone lines, electricity cables. Practically an invitation from where I was standing.”

Regina stared.

“No, I don’t think you really understand any of those things, do you?”

She tensed. “I know what they are, thank you.”

“Perhaps you do. But I’m a specialist.”

Silver could get in or out of anywhere. Which included whatever bubble of unreality currently held his absent colleagues, wherever that might be. He only had to find it. Steel might think that was boastful, but it was only the truth. But that was Steel for you. Unyielding. Not impressionable. Unbreakable. Like Sapphire, too, at her heart, no matter how much better she was at disguising it. Wherever they were, they would endure. Silver could be a little more adaptable, but then he was not an Operator. Ironically, maybe time was more on his colleagues’ side than it was his.

“What did you want?” said Regina, suddenly, grudgingly. “Because if it’ll get you to _go_ , I might even help you find it.” She looked almost surprised at her own words. “I can’t have you staying here.”

Silver shook his head. “It’s not here. You wouldn’t understand, anyway. A key to a prison. Possibly a box with the future inside it. I came here to look. If there had been a common factor –” He sighed and picked up a nearby straw from a box, twisting it into the shape of a treble clef before dropping it down on the bar. “There isn’t. Not here. I shall go, but I was asked to observe. I’m observing. I don’t like what I see very much.”

“Then go!”

Silver slipped off the stool. “I’ll be delighted to. Besides, how could _you_ help me? Rather too ironic, I’d say.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Silver raised both eyebrows. “So you should. You’ve not been very welcoming at all, Regina.”

She caught her breath, her fear intensifying. “Why should I? You’re not meant to be here, and this is _my_ town!”

“So, it is. Although I am curious – you made a perfect trap for your enemies and then you put yourself inside it. An odd thing to do deliberately. It’s more usually accidental. Or metaphorical. But, then, perhaps that’s the point here, isn’t it? Storybrooke. Yes. I think I almost see.”

Regina raised her head. “I’ve won. What would be the point, if I couldn’t see it? If I couldn’t be here to enjoy it; to make them all do whatever I want. This is my happy ending.”

“Oh,” said Silver blankly. “Is it? Being a sort of gaoler? Oh, dear. Well, I must be off. I wish I could say it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, but it really wasn’t.”

“You can’t just leave!”

Silver paused, halfway to the door. “I thought that was what you wanted me to do?”

“I meant literally,” she said, hastily backtracking. A little too much effort going into the casual tone. “It’s built into the Curse. But, of course, you’re not part of it. Something bad probably won’t happen to you when you try.” She gave a dark smile. “Won’t it be fun to find out?”

“I told you,” said Silver. “I can get in and out of anywhere. Unlike you, your Majesty.” 

He walked away through the door and left her alone in her unreal prison, surrounded by her oblivious victims.

Outside Storybrooke, back in regular Maine on a very boring highway, Silver dusted down his suit and eyed the grey skies above with misgiving before a blue and silver umbrella appeared in his hand. 

Really, he thought, walking away, poetic justice could be taken too far sometimes. Still, Sapphire would have been amused, even if Steel wouldn’t. It would have been so much nicer if they had been there. Silver pulled out his pocket watch and frowned. Wish you were here was for humans. He just needed to keep looking.

He vanished.


End file.
